Durong sighed softly and said, "A man who builds a mountain must first understand the stone. Every stone. Its weight and grain. Where it will hold and where it will crack."
He looked at his son's eyes. "I have always understood the stone."
"You have," his son agreed.
They were quiet for the span of twelve breaths. And then, suddenly, Shenjin moved.
He felt an abrupt warmth bloom in his chest. He mistook it for something trivial.
And when he wanted to speak again, he felt it again. The warmth was now turning into ice, and the ice into a searing, white-hot blade that twisted through his meridians.
He raised his hand, which was now trembling. He looked down and saw a single drop of blood fall upon the black jade, stark as a blood moon against a night sky.
Then another, and another.
From his mouth emerged a torrent of dark, congealed blood, splattering across the board. The white stones became islands in a red sea. The black stones vanished beneath the tide.
Shenjin stared at the ruin of the game, his vision blurring at the edges. His chaos qi, that boundless ocean he had commanded since he had become an immortal, was not simply draining, it was rotting.
A foul, cloying cold was spreading from his dantian like a parasite devouring the golden lotus of his cultivation from inside of his body.
He had not even felt the sting or anything that was happening inside his body. It came as a total shock to him. He was the great immortal revered across the realm but he couldn't even what was happening inside his body.
His eyes, wide with shock that was more profound than any physical pain, lifted towards his father. And seeing his face, his blood ran cold.
Durong Yang was smiling and it cleared all his doubts.
It was like the smile of a man who was watching a long-planned harvest finally come to fruition. Leaning back, he folded his hands into his sleeves, the very picture of a patriarch surveying his dominion.
"You are very strong, my son," Durong said, his voice dripping with a paternal affection that was now more grotesque than any open hatred.
"I didn't know you would last this long; you have proven that you are the strongest being in the three realms. A blade worthy of my hand but you see…" he gestured with a single fnger toward the blood soaked board, "even the finest blade can be dulled by a whisper of rust introduced to its sheath."
Jin tried to summon his qi, but he couldn't even feel an ounce of qi, and moreover, he couldn't even feel his body. He had lost all the sensation in the body. He remained seated, his hands on the edge of the stone board, knuckles white as his strength left his body continuously.
His mind raced, sifting through the past days, weeks and months.
When? HOW!!??
He was careful since he had learned the truth about his father and his wife. He had been vigilant and trusted no one since that day.
No one, then, before that day—
A rustle of silk, delicate as a moth's wing, whispered from behind his father.
From the shadows of the pavilion, Teng Yaohu emerged.
She was a vision to behold. A beautiful fairy she was; she had always been one. She wore very beautiful starlit attire, which added to her ethereal beauty. Her face was the very embodiment of warmth and playful grace but now looked like a porcelain mask of serene difference and her indifferent gaze passed Jin and went towards Durong Yang.
She moved towards his side, like she was an equal taking her rightful place beside the architect of destruction.
She did not look Jin with malice, her gaze was clinical. It was like a look of an artist examining a finished work.
"You always watched me so closely, Shenjin," she said, her voice the same lilting melody he had heard a hundred times across the places.
"Your vigilance was…flattering. But you were watching the wrong moments." A small pitying smile touched her lips.
"You were looking for the strike, the blade in the dark."
She reached into her sleeve and withdrew a small jade vial. It contained a strange liquid swirling inside the vial. She set it upon the edge of the blood stained board, a final piece in their deadly game.
"A blade, you would have sensed," she continued, her voice soft as falling snow.
"A sudden poison, you would have expelled before it touched your heart. But this..." she tapped the vial with a perfect, manicured nail.
"This is a poison that does not attack. It waits. It enters not through a wound but through a thousand small kindnesses, like the tea I brewed for you after your long training. The incense I burned in your chambers to aid your meditation. The wine I poured to celebrate your victories."
Durong chuckled, a low, rumbling sound. "It took seven years, Yaohu. Seven years to weave the threads. A single strand would have been nothing. But a thousand strands, woven slowly, patiently, into the very fabric of his being?"
He shook his head in mock admiration. "Even the strongest fortress falls when the foundation is eroded grain by grain."
"You are such a handful, my son. Even to kill you, we had to wait all these years."
Shen Jin's mind reeled. Seven years. For seven years, while he had smiled at her, while he had defended her to himself, to his own doubts, she had been meticulously, lovingly, sealing his doom. And his father, the man whom he respected all his life, had done him such a great deed, the reason for his destruction.
He looked at the vial, then at the two of them standing side by side. They were not afraid of him. Even now, with the truth laid bare, they regarded him not as a threat but as a problem nearing its solution.
"You..." Shen Jin's voice was a rasp, thick with blood and disbelief.
"You were afraid that I would kill you in direct combat."
A bitter, bloody laugh choked its way out of his throat. "You were waiting. Waiting for the poison to do what you could not."
Durong's smile did not waver. "A wise general does not storm an impregnable fortress. He starves it. He waits for the walls to crumble from within."
He placed a hand on Yaohu's shoulder, a gesture of dominion and partnership and Shenjin felt his stomach churn.
"You said it yourself, my son. You are stronger than anyone in this realm. So we did not fight your strength. We simply... gave it nowhere to go."
He stepped forward; Yaohu was holding his hand.
"You learned the truth," Durong said, looking down at his son with an expression that hovered between pity and triumph.
"And in your rage, in your grief, you did not notice that the tea you drank that morning was the final dose. The capstone. The thread that would pull the entire tapestry apart."
He turned, gesturing for Yaohu to follow. "The game is finished, Shenjin. Not with the move you made, but with the one you never saw coming."
They began to walk away, leaving him slumped over the board, his blood mingling with the scattered stones, his strength, his very life, seeping into the cracked jade.
Shen Jin's vision was darkening, but his mind, in its final moments of clarity, grasped one thing with terrifying certainty.
He had been stronger.
He had been better.
But strength alone was not enough against a love that had been a lie, against a hero who had been a monster, against a poison delivered with a smile for seven years.
He lifted his head one last time. His voice, when it came, was barely a whisper, but it carried the weight of a dying star.
"Father..."
Durong paused but did not turn.
Shenjin's lips, stained red, curled into a smile that mirrored his father's - cold, knowing and utterly without love.
"You taught me that the student's failure is blind acceptance." He coughed, a fresh wave of blood spilling onto the board. "I accepted your strength. I accepted her kindness. I will not accept this end."
He let his hand fall to his side, his fingers brushing against the hilt of his sword—a sword he no longer had the strength to draw.
"This game is not finished."
Durong finally looked back, his expression one of indulgent amusement.
"I will not die here," Shenjin said, his voice fading but his will burning brighter than it ever had in his strength.
"A blade may be dulled, but it can be reforged. A poison may spread, but it can be burned out. You wanted to see the blade you forged, Father. Then be patient. Wait for my return."
Durong's smile flickered. For the first time, a shadow of something, uncertainty? Fear? - passed behind his eyes.
But he said nothing.
He turned, and with Yaohu's hand in his, he walked away into the deepening night, leaving Shen Jin alone with the blood-soaked board, the vial, and the shattered remnants of a world that had been built on lies.
The last thing Shenjin saw before consciousness fled was the scattered stones of the game he had refused to play. He could feel himself losing his life, as his soul was being pulled into the void. His vision gradually faded into complete darkness.